Growing plants indoors has increased in popularity in recent years for several reasons. First, people are paying more attention to the quality of the food they consume. Consequently, growing plants for food at home by themselves has increased in popularity. Second, an increasing number of people have begun growing cash crops, such as flowers, at home for sale online. To effectively grow plants indoors, plant or grow lighting is typically required. Such lighting must be reliable and functional.
The development of new grow lighting for home use is also being driven by the rise in home grown marijuana. Growing marijuana for both medicinal and non-medicinal use is legal in many U.S. states and will be legalized in Canada by 2018. As the quality of marijuana depends on growing conditions, and most importantly lighting, the demand for grow lighting is expected to increase dramatically.
However, existing grow lighting systems for home use have several disadvantages. The first generation of grow lighting equipment included high-intensity discharge (“HID”) lamps, metal-halide (“MH”) lamps, and fluorescent lamps or tubes. Fluorescent tubes are often too long to use in small scale indoor operations. They are most commonly used in commercial operations. HID and MH lamps are designed for general lighting purposes and are typically not suitable for grow lighting due to their low efficiency and high heat generation. Second generation ceramic discharge lamps (“CDL”) provided a better solution for grow lighting as they overcame some of the disadvantages of first generation products. But, heat, power efficiency and bulb reliability remain problematic for such second generation solutions.
The third generation of grow lighting is based on light emitting diode (“LED”) based lamps and systems. Research into plant growth and development of LED technology has led to the emergence of LED lighting as the best solution for plant growing. Research has found that red and blue light are significant factors for improved plant growth, especially for photosynthesis. At the same time, new LED lamps can create any specific light color including red and blue light. This feature of LED lamps shows great promise for the use of LED lamps in the grow lighting field.
Due to consumer demand, many LED-based grow lighting systems are available. However, most of these existing products are not actually suitable for grow lighting as their light spectrum settings are not appropriate for enhancing plant growth. In addition, existing systems have low durability, short-life spans, noisy fans, poor industrial design, and ineffective controls. For example, while products such as the Titan™ series from Cirrus™ use LED lamps, these systems typically only control light intensity.
A need therefore exists for an improved user controllable grow lighting system and method. Accordingly, a solution that addresses, at least in part, the above and other shortcomings is desired.